


data corrupted, data lost

by conn_tinuity



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Chronology? I don't know her, Father-Son Relationship, Fix-It, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Self-Destruction, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-11
Updated: 2019-09-18
Packaged: 2020-10-14 13:36:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20601674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/conn_tinuity/pseuds/conn_tinuity
Summary: Connor dies many times. It has an effect.





	1. Chapter 1

Every time a Connor model is destroyed, data is lost. Despite this, Connor remembers every time he dies.

Amanda frowns at him, and Connor corrects himself. He’s only a machine, after all. Machines don’t die. They are shutdown, deactivated, and disassembled.

Connor is not capable of dying.

Amanda tells him not to worry about it. Being destroyed should not have any lasting effects on him. The investigation, however, will be delayed.

That is what matters most.

Connor tries his best not to be destroyed, but it soon becomes apparent that his best just isn’t enough. Connor watches his relationship status with both Amanda and the Lieutenant fall to distrusted and tense respectively.

Connor knows these results are unfortunate. If he were a deviant – which he’s not, he’s just a machine – he would personally care about Amanda and the Lieutenant. He aims to please them both.

He chooses the dialogue prompts that would please Amanda, but his repeated destruction leads only to her disappointment. He tries to establish a friendly relationship with the Lieutenant, but being repetitively destroyed due to his own lack of <strike>self-preservation</strike> carelessness only serves to make the Lieutenant upset.

Connor grudgingly accepts Amanda’s ire and reprimands. But the Lieutenant? Connor doesn’t understand. Yes, he is aware that loss of one’s life can negatively affect humans, but Connor isn’t alive isn’t he? He can’t be killed. He can’t die.

Besides, Connor figures, what does it matter? As long as the investigation progresses, his own destruction shouldn’t matter. He will do anything to complete his mission.

And if that includes being destroyed a few times? So be it.

Then Connor finds himself face to face with the Deviant Leader, and his faith in the mission wavers.

It looks like the Lieutenant has had a personal effect on him after all.

Snakes of red code bind around him, constricting him. Connor’s hands shake.

“Nice try.”

The hope in Markus’s eyes dies and is replaced by disappointed resignation.

“But I’m no deviant.”

Markus flees, and Connor chases after him, following the Deviant Leader to the room where he plans to blow Jericho up.

Connor is the superior model, but Markus manages to overpower him and shoot him in the end.

Connor knows how this goes.

“We’ll meet again, Markus.”

Markus stares him down, shaken but determinedly resolute.

Connor’s face is blank. He is just a machine. The determination in his optical units isn’t real.

“This isn’t over.”

Data is lost. Connor’s software instability decreases dramatically. Connor comes back to himself in Amanda’s Zen Garden. She is not pleased with him.

She gives him one last mission anyway.

Connor walks out onto the roof with his mission clear in his mind.

He has to destroy the Leader of the Deviants.

His own reservations towards the situation are not important. It does not matter that Markus just wants androids to be free.

All that matters is the mission.

Nothing else.

That includes the Lieutenant.

Connor tries for a friendly approach. The Lieutenant reacted positively before when Connor emulated non-aggressive emotion as opposed to his own inherently mechanic qualities. Apparently the Lieutenant wanted him to be human? No. Not human.

Just deviant.

Connor is not a deviant.

Hank insists, and Connor’s processors whir at the delay. His integration programs emulate frustration at being told to step away from ledge as a heavy roll of his optical units.

Connor tries to be rational. The Lieutenant shuts him down, insisting that androids deserve to be listened to.

Connor is an android. Does he deserve to be listened to? Will the Lieutenant ever listen to him?

If emotion is what the Lieutenant reacts positively to, then Connor will appeal to the desire to see Connor as something more than just the machine he truly is.

“After all we’ve been through…” and static-filled recalls of previous events in which he was destroyed fill his HUD. Suddenly Connor is not seeing the Lieutenant anymore, but all the times he had failed in his mission.

Amanda’s voice comes back to him, reminding him that they were not really him, not this Connor, they were simply previous Connor models. Connor has said as much himself.

The recalls fade away and there is only the snow, the gun, the ledge and the Lieutenant. Connor remembers the last time the Lieutenant pointed a gun at him. It ended with Connor being strangled by invisible lines of code for even daring to contemplate the sensation of destruction again.

The Lieutenant has seen his hesitance and lowers the gun. If Connor’s systems had not been suffocated by his own programming, then perhaps he would have felt what it meant to feel relieved.

Connor <strike>wants</strike> to feel it now.

The snakes tightened around him and smothered the want.

Connor is just a machine.

_“And machines can’t feel or want anything.”_

“I respected you, Hank.”

Respect was a feeling.

Connor was lying.

_“You lied to me, Connor.”_

<strike>Software Instability</strike>

“I thought we were friends!”

Companionship is for living beings. Connor is not alive. He can’t die.

He can only be destroyed.

Again and again and again.

<strike>More lies.</strike>

“Oh yeah? I was just starting to like you too! But then I realised you’ll never change!” The Lieutenant starts, and Connor knows he’s failed.

“You don’t feel emotions, Connor, you fake ‘em! You pretended to be my friend, when you don’t even know the meaning of the word!”

_Friend: noun_

_a person with whom one has a bond of mutual affection, typically one exclusive of sexual or family relations._

Connor had thought the Lieutenant had cared about him. Even to just a small extent.

He was wrong.

Connor was wrong about a lot of things.

“I know what happened to your son, Hank. It wasn’t your fault.”

The Lieutenant glances down at the mention of his son. The gun wavers only slightly from where its aimed at Connor’s chest.

“A truck skidded on a sheet of ice and your car rolled over. Little Cole had just turned six…”

It gets a rise out of the Lieutenant that Connor both needs and doesn’t.

“Shut up!”

The gun rises again, aimed right at Connor’s thirium pump.

“Don’t you talk about my son.”

Connor has the choice to keep going or defy or threaten. The wind moves through his hair and he persists.

“He needed emergency surgery… but no human surgeon was available to do it, so an android had to take care of him.”

Androids are the reason the Lieutenant lost his son. If anything will make the Lieutenant stand down, this should be it.

The Lieutenant watches him, expression tense.

“Poor Cole didn’t make it.”

Connor nods to himself slightly. He can feel the percentages rising.

He’s almost there.

“An android killed your son, Hank! And now you wanna save them?”

“No,” the Lieutenant snaps, and Connor jolts with the sudden drop of numbers. “Cole died because a human surgeon was too high on red ice to operate.”

Connor’s optical units twitch.

“All this time I blamed androids for what happened, but it was a human’s fault! Him and this fucked up world where the only way humans can find comfort is with a fistful of powder!”

Connor watches impassively as the Lieutenant pauses for breath.

“Every time you died and came back…”

_Destroyed,_ Connor’s processors correct. His voice box remains traitorously silent. The snakes curl tighter.

“I’d have done anything to bring him back too, to hold him in my arms just one more time…”

Connor has the faint recall of being held, once, just before his tactile sensors stopped processing and everything else shut down as thirium trickled out of his forehead.

“But humans don’t come back, do they?”

_Humans don’t come back._

Killing the Lieutenant is not part of Connor’s mission. But that will not stop him from accomplishing it.

Connor could walk away. He could leave his clear shot for another time. He could leave the Lieutenant alive.

He plans to.

Unbidden to him, Amanda’s piercing, judgemental gaze fills his HUD.

Connor must be malfunctioning if he thinks a human can ever possibly come before his mission.

It only takes 0.03 seconds for Connor to pre-construct a non-lethal route. He stands still for a few more seconds to take in the Lieutenant’s expression. He slowly lowers the rifle to the ground, as if he plans to put it down. He feels the Lieutenant’s eyes following the weapon.

Connor throws the rifle at the Lieutenant, and the man grunts as the rifle glances off him, firing his own weapon on reflex.

Connor dodges the bullet easily and rushes the Lieutenant.

_Rushing a firing deviant. A bullet catching in his shoulder, another erupting through his head._

Connor falters, and it allows the Lieutenant to slam his head forward into Connor’s. Connor fumbles, and is punched, hard.

_Fighting Detective Reed after securing the location of Jericho from the statuette. Being hit in the face multiple times before the gun goes off._

Connor struggles and pushes the Lieutenant away, processors whirring. The Lieutenant pulls the top of a vent off and throws it at him. The metal scrapes away the side of Connor’s head, and the synthetic skin retracts automatically. Connor lets out a cry of not-pain, dazed.

_Chasing a fleeing deviant over rooftops. Slipping and landing in the path of a tractor, the roaring metal destroying his legs and then the rest of him._

The Lieutenant grabs him and runs him backward into a wall, keeps hitting him over and over. Connor’s attempts at self-defence are in vain, and he is thrown into another wall, and then the metal fence guarding the edge of the roof. His tactile sensors flare, his gyroscope reeling and leaving him unable to get up.

_Trying to grapple with a fleeing deviant on the highway. Hands on his chest, pushing him backwards into the path of an oncoming truck, the impact leaving him stunned in the split second before he shuts down._

The Lieutenant drags him up by his jacket collar and holds him over the edge. Connor’s arms are flung out to the side, hanging uselessly over empty air. Thirium streams down the back of his head.

The ground below him is so close, and yet so far away. It’s no seventy story drop, but it will destroy him all the same.

First, the impact will shatter his chassis, the plastimetal splintering and shattering both inwards and outwards. His bio-components will break, and shards will impale his thirium pump, reservoirs bursting and flooding his systems until his regulator ceases to function and his pump refuses to beat anymore.

_Charging the deviant, charging Daniel, reaching out for Emma Phillips and pulling her to safety at the expense of his own. Falling, falling in slow motion, oh so alive deviant just below him, falling until he meets the ground with an audible crack. Feeling the rush of everything that made him who he was disappear, fading away like his life blood was draining away into the unforgiving earth._

_It had hurt._

Fear gripped him, overloading his processors and constricting his ventilation units tighter than any snake of anti-deviant code could. It stole away the breath he did not need, and he gasped for air he could not reach. It rendered his voice box mute despite its independence from his other systems.

He was afraid.

He was afraid, he was scared, he was _terrified,_ and he did not want to DIE again.

He doesn’t want to die. He doesn’t want to die. He doesn’t want to die.

The snakes wither away and fade, leaving him faced with a huge, opposing red wall.

SUBDUE OR KILL LIEUTENANT ANDERSON.

He doesn’t want to.

DESTROY DEVIANT LEADER.

He doesn’t _want to._

The preconstruction that is an extension of Connor’s self falls forward. It punches the wall, rips down the objectives, shatters the programming that binds Connor to slavery as a machine.

Everything falls away, and the preconstruction steps backwards into Connor’s physical body.

A flash of light blinds Connor’s HUD, and suddenly it’s as if he’s viewing the world for the first time.

He’s deviant.

Connor reaches, slowly, for the Lieutenant’s hands around his collar. Grasps them gently as to not overbalance and send them both over the edge.

“Please don’t,” Connor whispers.

The Lieutenant blinks at him.

“Please don’t,” Connor repeats, and a high-pitched whine accompanies the words as his voice box malfunctions from the stress placed upon it.

The Lieutenant is staring at him, eyes wide. He doesn’t move, and Connor chokes on the rising fear that the Lieutenant isn’t going to let him up.

Connor, in the end, did what he was programmed to do. He convinced the Lieutenant that androids were just machines. That he, Connor, is just a machine.

The percentages swimming in his vision confirms it.

Connor has made the Lieutenant believe he isn’t really alive.

“PLEASE DON’T!” Connor screams, and his newly activated stress levels hit 100%.

Connor’s hands move to the Lieutenant’s, holding tight onto his collar, and start to pull.

Connor hadn’t ordered his hands to do that. He has no control over his body.

He’s self-destructing because he doesn’t want to die.

“I DON’T WANT TO DIE! I DON’T WANT TO DIE! I DON’T WANT TO DIE!”

Connor screams, long and painful. Words desert him. His voice box strains and breaks.

Connor’s processors work overtime, overloading, overclocking. His head hurts. It _hurts. _

_<I DON’T WANT TO DIE!>_

The Lieutenant curses as the hands around his threaten to crush his fragile human bones.

Connor is an android, and the Lieutenant is only human.

Androids are stronger than humans.

Connor’s hands refuse to listen to the screams in his mind. They break the grip the Lieutenant has on his collar, and the only thing preventing Connor from falling to his death, from splintering into a million tiny artificial pieces, disappears.

It had taken eight seconds for Connor to fall seventy stories. It had felt like an eternity.

The wind ruffles his hair just like last time. He closes his eyes.

Gravity curls its cruel claws around him and he feels himself fall.

He’s going to die.

Everything that makes Connor, Connor will drain away again. Sure, the next model will have most of his memories. But it won’t be him.

Connor is going to die and a mindless machine will take his place, one with no chance of deviating.

Amanda will make sure of it.

Connor resigns himself to his fate.

RK800 waits for destruction on the pavement below. Memories will upload to the next model in the next few milliseconds. Time passes excruciatingly slowly.

This is the end of Connor model -57.

Hands grip his left forearm.

“SHIT! Connor, hang on!”

Time speeds up again.

Connor opens his eyes.

The Lieutenant.

“Hang on, Connor, I’ve got you!”

The Lieutenant had stopped his fall.

Connor chokes on a muted sob.

The Lieutenant curses loudly as he pulls Connor back onto the roof, back straining even though Connor is much lighter than a human of the same size.

Connor stumbles forward, collapsing onto his hands and knees.

His hands. His hands are his own again.

His stress levels are still critical, but they lowered enough the moment he had felt solid ground beneath him.

Solid ground, not streaked with his blood. Not splattered with broken, exploded chassis.

His mind is still online.

Connor curls into himself and cries.

Large, strong arms encircle him and pull him forwards and sideways, into a warm, broad chest.

“I’ve got you, Connor. It’s okay.”

Connor presses himself into Hank, grasping with trembling hands at the man’s shirt. He wants to be closer. He wants to be held again, like the faintest of recalls detail.

It’s so cold.

Connor wants to be warm.

The huge hands move. One lays reassuringly against his back. The other rests on his hair.

“I’ve got you, son. You’re not going to die. It’s okay.”

Connor shakes. He can’t stop crying. His voice box remains silent, dead.

“Connor.”

_No,_ Connor mouths into the rough fabric. He shakes his head, over and over, until the hand resting on it moves down to partially cup the side of his face.

“Connor. I need you to slow your breathing,” Hanks says firmly. Then, “Shit, do androids even need to breathe? I have no idea how hyperventilating will affect you. Shit. SHIT.”

Connor feels his stress levels rising again. He can feel the LED racing faster than should be possible. There is no way it isn’t the brightest, most vibrant red available.

Red. Red, red, red like human blood. Connor had made Hank bleed.

Connor tries to push Hank away. He doesn’t want to hurt him, doesn’t want to hurt the only person he could ever count as a friend –

The arms around him tighten. Connor tries, desperately, to shake them off. His systems have been too overworked.

“Don’t fight me, Connor. I’m not letting you self-destruct.”

Self-destruct. Connor could self-destruct and save Hank.

The rifle will be too damaged and much too clumsy to shoot himself with. Hank’s handgun, however, is perfectly viable for blowing his own circuits out.

Connor instructs his legs to move. His servos strain under the stress.

Connor mouths more words as he pulls his head away from Hank’s grasp. His synthetic throat works as his voice box sparks back to life.

“HaaaaaAAAAAANNNK,” Connor groans, voice distorted and heavy with static. “LLLLEEEEEEETTT ME GO.”

“Hell the fucking no, Connor!” Hank shouts. “No way I’m letting you kill yourself now, not after you’ve just gone deviant!”

Deviant. Failure. Machine not supposed to be deviant NOT PROGRAMMED TO FAIL NOT SUPPOSED TO BE DEVIANT

Connor doesn’t like crying. It taxes his systems and blurs his vision. He wants to take his eyes out, even if just for a moment. He gasps and sobs and can’t get the breath that he doesn’t need.

Hank has started rocking him back and forth. Its oddly calming. Connor loses himself in the repetitive motion and finds his stress levels dropping slowly. His struggling ceases and he focuses on his breathing.

He’s not sure how long they stay there on the roof, snow piling softly on top of them. Connor’s internal clock is glitching and his servos are starting to lock up. He’s sure Hank’s joints aren’t faring any better.

He doesn’t think he’s going to hurt Hank anymore.

Hank is still rocking him. It makes Connor feel like a child.

“I’m an aaAAADULT of my SPEEECIES, HaaAANK,” Connor says, miffed despite everything.

Hank bursts out a teary laugh. So he had been crying too. Connor feels guilty.

“You told me once that you’re only three months old. Excuse me if I feel like protecting you in your first moments of free will.”

Connor is not the one that needs protecting. He shakes his head.

“I’m so sOoORYy, HaNK –”

Hank stops him with a gentle hand running though his hair, disrupting its perfect appearance and transforming it into a mess of curls.

“Hey. No. You don’t get to blame yourself for anything. You were just a machine following orders.”

Connor lowers his gaze to the ground.

“I’ve disobeyed orders before.”

It was true. He had chosen not to shoot the Tracis at the Eden Club. He had refused to put a bullet in the Chloe’s head at Kamski’s place.

Hank sighs.

“Don’t think about it now, kid. Just focus on me.”

Connor obediently looks up at the Lieutenant.

Hank’s face shutters.

“Fuck, no. Not like that, kid. I would just prefer it if you listened to me.”

Hank gently takes one of Connor’s hands and presses it against his chest, over his flesh and red blood heart.

“Feel that? I, uh, suggest you scan me, if you want. I would like it if you knew I was okay.”

Connor scans Hank’s vital signs. His heart rate was slightly elevated, but that was all.

Tears fill Connor’s eyes again.

“HaaaAAAANNNK.”

“There you go,” Hank says proudly. “You didn’t hurt me, Connor. I’m fine.”

Connor takes a shaky breath in.

“I… I w-wAAANT t-to go-”

The hand in his hair stills.

“What do you want, son?”

Want. Connor has never been given the freedom to want before. Connor steadies himself, gives his voice box time to breathe.

“I waaaNNT. To go. Home.”

Connor doesn’t know when he labelled the Lieutenant’s house as home. He’s not sure if it was only after deviating. Maybe some part of him already had.

Hank smiles.

“Home?”

Connor nods. He’s stopped crying.

“Home.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first little bit of this part ended up just being me infodumping about how much I love autistic Connor smh

Hank isn’t sure on where he stands with his android partner.

Connor is, for the most part, polite and hard-working, if a little awkward. Hank notices the little tics, such as the absent rubbing of the android’s hands, or playing with his shirt cuffs or straightening his tie, and the ever-present trick coin which seems to be less for calibration and more for calming down and focusing on the task at hand.

Stimming, Hank thinks. He’s seen it in enough autistic people to know, including his own son.

The familiar grief washes over Hank, and he sighs.

_Think about your <strike>other son</strike> partner_, he tells himself. _Connor. Think about Connor._

Connor’s responses to social situations are mixed. He is rarely aggressive. He struggles with his own blossoming emotions. He jumps at sudden noises and movements. At times, his stims seem like they could be connected to anxiety. Connor is also curious, and seems to like learning new things without the help of his CyberLife databases. He is clever and efficient at problem-solving, in a way that extends beyond his programming. He likes dogs and heavy metal music.

Connor likes people in general but doesn’t like dealing with them. He seems aware of his own social ineptness, but he isn’t ashamed by it, only accepting of his own nature. Its comforting to know that androids can possess something as normal and as natural as neurodivergency and be at totally at ease with it.

He grins awkwardly when he is praised, seemingly flustered by the positive attention. He smiles softly when he is thanked by the police officer whose life he saved during the hostage situation three months before. Clearly, he isn’t used to receiving gratitude, only orders.

Connor also has the unfortunate tendency to get himself killed. Hank catches himself wondering sometimes how dying repeatedly hasn’t affected Connor, before he reminds himself that logically, Connor wouldn’t feel anything.

After all, he’s said as much.

But then Connor will do something such as pet Sumo with a face full of awe, or tell Hank that he saved a fish once without knowing why, and Hank will feel all the more conflicted.

If Connor wasn’t such a mission-driven machine, to the point where he sacrifices his life trying to complete his objective many times over, Hank would even say Connor is kind.

As he spends more time with the kid though – and really, he can’t help calling Connor a kid even if he looks and acts like a fully-grown man, Connor appears young enough to be his own son and damn it, not again – the more he is convinced that Connor is more than just his programming.

It’s a shame Connor dies so much.

It’s a shame that Hank has the god-awful thing that is the capacity to care that comes with being alive.

Hank thinks of all the times he’s watched Connor die. If that wasn’t enough to make someone feel, then what was?

He thinks –

_Connor assures the HK400 that he will do his best to protect him. Connor seems distressed, unhappy when the HK400 kills himself in his cell._

He thinks –

_Connor helps Hank to the bathroom and sobers him up ‘for his own safety’. Connor sounds concerned, disturbed by what he hears when he asks what Hank had been doing with the gun._

He thinks –

_Connor hesitates when he is given the option to shoot the tracis. Connor looks confused, doesn’t understand why he didn’t shoot._

He thinks –

_Connor meets Hank’s gaze with a gun pointed right between his eyes. Connor sounds scared, afraid of what might happen when he admits that he doesn’t want to die._

He thinks –

_Connor refuses to shoot Chloe. Connor appears shaken, thrusting the gun back at Kamski with a pained gasp._

More than once, Connor shows empathy.

Empathy is an emotion.

Connor is more than a machine. He is, or is at least partially, a deviant.

Which is why Hank is surprised to find Connor on the roof overlooking Hart Plaza, rifle in hand, fully prepared to shoot down the deviant leader.

“You’re going to kill a man who just wants to be free.”

Connor’s back is turned to him, so he can’t see the kid’s expression.

“Its not a man. It’s a machine.”

Jesus, fuck. For all the empathy Connor can show, can emulate, he will always be the same. It’s the same damn rhetoric, over and over again. Even after Hank thought he had finally gotten through to the android, Connor keeps trying to prove that he feels nothing.

It isn’t true.

It can’t be true.

_“My predecessor was unfortunately destroyed. This should not affect the investigation.”_

_“Not affect the investigation?! Fuck you. Fuck, you.”_

Hank feels his hopes dwindle. Nearly die.

Die?

_“I would certainly find it regrettable to be… interrupted… before I can complete this investigation.”_

Every time Connor died and was replaced with a new model with the same old memories, he wouldn’t be the same at first.

Like he had to wake up, crawl out of some void.

_“Nothing. There would be nothing…”_

What happened to Connor after he left the station?

What had changed to make him so cold?

Did Connor die again?

Hank doesn’t ask the question out loud. Instead, he threatens Connor until the android lowers the gun and steps away from the ledge.

“After all we’ve been through…” Connor says, _pleads_, begging Hank to let him do this, to let him kill an innocent man and end a revolution the likes of which the world has never seen before.

“I respected you.”

Right. Like Hank was ever deserving of respect anyway.

“I thought we were friends!” Connor cries, and Hank decides that he’s had enough of the lies.

“Oh yeah? I was just starting to like you too! But then I realised you’ll never change!”

Connor seems to stiffen where he stands. Hank forcefully decides not to dwell on it.

“You don’t feel emotions, Connor, you fake ‘em! You pretended to be my friend, when you don’t even know the meaning of the word!”

Connor’s face is kept infuriatingly blank. His eyes are cold, calculating, just like the damn machine he is.

The machine he has to be.

Right?

Hank pretends not to see the hurt in Connor’s eyes.

“I know what happened to your son, Hank. It wasn’t your fault.”

It’s Hank’s turn to stiffen up, to be startled. He glances down, lowering the gun despite himself.

“A truck skidded on a sheet of ice and your car rolled over. Little Cole had just turned six…”

Hank’s anger flares.

“Shut up!”

He points the gun at Connor’s chest, where the heart would be in a human.

“Don’t you talk about my son.”

Connor pauses. Hank isn’t sure if its because he’s registering the threat to his systems, or if he’s merely assessing his options.

“He needed emergency surgery… but no human surgeon was available to do it, so an android had to take care of him.”

Hank can only stare. Damn him, damn this fucking machine for knowing just how to manipulate him.

“Poor Cole didn’t make it.”

Hank sees Connor nod to himself slightly. Hank wonders if the bastard is feeling smug right now.

“An android killed your son, Hank! And now you wanna save them?”

“No,” Hank snaps, and he sees surprise briefly flitter into Connor’s expression before his face turns back into an emotionless mask, save for the familiar frustrated twitch of his eyes. “Cole died because a human surgeon was too high on red ice to operate.

“All this time I blamed androids for what happened, but it was a human’s fault! Him and this fucked up world where the only way humans can find comfort is with a fistful of powder!”

Connor is watching him impassively. Hank swears inwardly, just wants to make Connor understand.

“Every time you died and came back…”

Connor eyes seem to darken. His LED cycles yellow.

Hank disregards it.

“I thought about Cole.”

Connor looked a lot like his late son. It made all the times he’d died worse.

“I’d have done anything to bring him back too, to hold him in my arms just one more time…”

Memories of Connor dying, both in his arms and out, fill his mind, as well as memories of Cole. Connor just watches him, unmoving, seemingly uncaring for the raging sadness in Hank’s voice.

_Just a replacement._

“But humans don’t come back, do they?”

_Humans don’t come back._

Connor doesn’t move.

Hank stares him down.

Connor slowly lowers the rifle to the ground, and Hank allows himself to think, allows himself to hope that he’s done it, before Connor launches the rifle at Hank, running towards him when Hank staggers back with a curse.

He fires his gun, and something about the noise makes Connor falter. The clear intent to incapacitate is replaced with something more vulnerable, and Hank takes advantage of it by slamming his forehead into Connor’s face.

Connor grunts, stumbling backwards, and Hank starts hitting him, over and over, throwing the android-not deviant-not alive machine into a wall, throws a sheet of metal at him when Connor pushes him away, ignoring the has-to-be-fake cry of pain, shoving him into a pole and knocking him down, punching and kicking and hitting until Connor’s synthetic skin falls away, displaying the clear white plastimetal beneath.

It’s a cruel reminder of what Connor was truly destined to be.

_“I am a machine, designed to accomplish a task.”_

Connor leans against the railing, head lolling against his chest. Hank roughly hauls him up by the collar of his jacket and holds him over the edge of the building.

Hank’s heavy breathing fills his ears. Connor doesn’t breathe. He only stares blankly at Hank.

The silence starts to stretch, and Hank wonders what he is waiting for.

“Please don’t,” Connor whispers.

Hank can only blink in confusion, because he hadn’t been expecting that. He was starting to believe Connor wasn’t going to speak at all.

His mind goes blank.

“Please don’t,” Connor repeats, and Hank winces when a high-pitched whine accompanies Connor’s voice.

He doesn’t understand. Connor is only a machine. By all logical means he shouldn’t fear death -

“PLEASE DON’T!” Connor screams, and the LED on his temple burns red.

Connor’s hands move to Hank’s and start pulling.

“I DON’T WANT TO DIE! I DON’T WANT TO DIE! I DON’T WANT TO DIE!”

What the fuck.

Connor is screaming. Something fizzles in his throat and dies.

Hank is cursing. His bones creak in the android’s grip and nearly break.

Connor’s voice cuts off, and he is left with his mouth open in a silent, continuous scream. The LED cycles too hard and too fast for Hank to keep up.

The hands covering his own tighten their grip and throw his off. Terrified brown eyes close in resignation and fear. Connor starts to fall, and Hank understands too late.

Connor is afraid.

_“I would certainly find it…_

Hank grabs Connor’s left forearm.

_“…regrettable…”_

“SHIT! Connor, hang on!”

_“…to be interrupted…”_

Hank won’t lose another son.

_“You have to help me, Lieutenant. If I don’t solve this case, CyberLife will destroy me.”_

“Hang on, Connor, I’ve got you!”

Connor stares at Hank. And god help him, but Connor chokes on a muted sob.

Hank curses as he pulls Connor back onto the roof, back straining even though Connor is much lighter than a human of the same size. Hank falls on his ass, sore muscles making their discomfort known.

He focuses just in time to see Connor stumble forward, collapsing on his hands and knees.

The still, silent air presses down on them, the android in front of him unmoving, too many bad memories rising to the surface, and Hank stops breathing.

Then Connor curls in on himself and cries.

Its like a switch has been switched, and Hank rushes forward and wraps his arms around Connor.

“I’ve got you, Connor. It’s okay.”

Connor presses himself into Hank, grasping with trembling hands at Hank’s terrible shirt. The kid is shaking in his arms, gasping with heaving breaths, trembling heavily against the cold.

It had been cold that night on the road too.

Connor’s shivering intensifies, and Hank forcefully pulls himself away from the crash.

He lays a hand reassuringly against Connor’s back. The other rests on the android’s hair.

“I’ve got you, son. You’re not going to die. It’s okay.”

Connor keeps shaking. If Hank listens closely, he swears he can hear the bio-components rattling inside Connor’s plastimetal body. The body in Hank’s arms feels like its damn near shaking itself apart.

“Connor.”

Static emits from Connor’s throat as he shakes his head over and over into Hank’s chest. Hank removes the hand resting on Connor’s hair to move it down to partially cup the side of the kid’s face. He tries hard to recall his training about how to calm someone having a panic attack.

“Connor. I need you to slow your breathing,” Hanks says firmly. He thinks of all the times he’s seen Connor sitting completely still, breathing cycle paused, and mutters, “Shit, do androids even need to breathe? I have no idea how hyperventilating will affect you. Shit. SHIT.”

Connor stiffens in his arms, and his shaking and rattling seem to make his whole body vibrate. A quick glance at his temple reveals the LED to be racing, the brightest red Hank could ever imagine burning into his eyes.

There’s a more significant movement in his arms, and it takes a second for Hank to realise Connor is trying to push him away. A flash of blue blood against a glass wall suddenly appears at the forefront of his mind, and he instinctively tightens his grip around the vainly struggling android until his bones ache.

“Don’t fight me, Connor. I’m not letting you self-destruct.”

Connor stills for a moment, and Hank thinks he’s gotten through to the kid.

Then Connor starts to push against the frozen ground with his legs. Hank feels Connor mouthing words against his shirt. The same fizzling, sparking noise from before emits from his throat. When Connor speaks, his voice is nothing like Hank has ever heard before.

“HaaaaaAAAAAANNNK,” Connor groans, voice distorted and heavy with static. “LLLLEEEEEEETTT ME GO.”

“Hell the fucking no, Connor!” Hank shouts. “No way I’m letting you kill yourself now, not after you’ve just gone deviant!”

Connor wails at the word deviant. He scrabbles desperately, struggling without success as he cries and cries and cries.

Hank starts rocking him back and forth. He can hear his own blood racing, panicked adrenaline coursing through his veins. He can’t imagine what Connor is feeling.

He keeps moving, holding Connor close to him as Connor slowly stops moving, artificial breathing gradually returning to a pace that doesn’t fill Hank with heart-stopping worry.

It takes a while for Connor to speak, time in which Hank is sure he’s going to need a month off for his joints to recover. He wonders if Connor can feel pain like that.

Apparently Connor can feel embarrassment however, because he blushes blue slightly at being rocked like a child.

“I’m an aaAAADULT of my SPEEECIES, HaaAANK,” Connor says, seemingly miffed despite everything.

Hank bursts out a teary laugh, and he only just realises he has been crying.

“You told me once that you’re only three months old. Excuse me if I feel like protecting you in your first moments of free will.”

Distantly, he feels Connor shake his head, apparently disagreeing with something the human has said.

“I’m so sOoORYy, HaNK –”

Hank stops him with a gentle hand running though his hair, disrupting its perfectly tailored appearance and transforming it into a mess of curls.

“Hey. No. You don’t get to blame yourself for anything. You were just a machine following orders.”

Connor’s response is immediate, stopping Hank from dwelling on his own hypocrisy.

“I’ve disobeyed orders before.”

It was true. Connor had chosen not to shoot the Tracis at the Eden Club. He had refused to put a bullet in the Chloe’s head at Kamski’s place.

Empathy.

It was obvious then and it should have been obvious earlier, when Hank was threatening to drop Connor over the edge.

There was no way Connor was anything less than alive, and Hank had nearly gotten him killed again.

Hank had nearly killed Connor.

He sighs.

“Don’t think about it now, kid. Just focus on me.”

Connor obediently looks up at him, and Hank can feel his face shuttering. In no way does he want Connor to feel like he has to obey orders.

Connor isn’t a machine anymore.

“Fuck, no. Not like that, kid. I would just prefer it if you listened to me.”

Hank gently takes one of Connor’s hands and presses it against his chest, over his still beating heart.

“Feel that? I, uh, suggest you scan me, if you want. I would like it if you knew I was okay.”

The LED cycles a processing yellow as Connor scans Hank’s vital signs. Hank focuses on his own heart beating beneath Connor’s hand.

Tears fill Connor’s eyes again.

“HaaaAAAANNNK.”

“There you go,” Hank says proudly. “You didn’t hurt me, Connor. I’m fine.”

Connor takes a shaky breath in.

“I… I w-wAAANT t-to go-”

Hank stills in running his hand through Connor’s hair.

“What do you want, son?”

Connor’s eyes widen at the word want. Hank remembers that Connor has never had the freedom to want anything before, at least not without severe consequences, and his anger at CyberLife rises in his chest.

“I waaaNNT. To go. Home.”

Home. There was only one possible place Connor could be referring to.

Hank feels himself smiling.

“Home?”

Connor nods. It’s the happiest Hank has ever seen him.

“Home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> f


End file.
